This Old Laundry Room

The laundry room in most homes gets little attention. Why is that? When I worked in real estate years ago I was always surprised how unfinished most laundry rooms were. They’re usually not very big rooms so why not trick them out and make them really useful? I’m not suggesting putting in tv’s but with the amount of time we spend going in and out of that room we might as well make it a pleasant place to visit.

The one item we didn’t include in our laundry room was a sink. I know that might sound crazy, but we have a bathroom around the corner if we need to rinse out something. We typically don’t require the need to wash anything prior to it going into the washer so we decided no sink (so far we’re very happy with that decision).

Here’s a look at the raw space. The room has looked like this for about 5 years. It’s about time we gave it some attention.

Directly across from the washer and dryer was this space that we had planned just to put in a nice shelf to fold laundry.

And here is the finished product.

We tucked this cabinet below into a space no larger than a few feet wide.

We struggled a little with this shelf which breaks up the upper and lower cabinets. I don’t even know how Shawn got it in there. And initially he didn’t want to do it saying it would take alot of extra time for about two inches of extra space. We told him to forget about it but when we came home he had gone with the original plan and we’re so glad he did.

We made the doors the same way we did in the kitchen. We used finished birch plywood (about $35 a 4 x 8 sheet) and then covered it in the same molding we’re using for window and baseboard trim around the house. This made the doors extra sturdy. I also doubled up on the magentic door stops to keep the potential warping down to a minimum. Doors warp because the wood isn’t very dry these days so months after you build something the wood starts shrinking and gaps and warping starts happening.

Inside we used the same birch plywood for the shelves. We trimmed the front edge of the shelves in a piece of molding we hand made. It’s just a piece of weed that we cut a small bead into on two sides. This gives a nice finish and can work with many style homes. See how that bottom shelf adds a nice little extra bit of character to the piece? It’s one of my favorite parts of the cabinet. We did talk about making the shelves adjustable for future owners but nixed that idea, it was too much work to make that work.

And here’s a finished look.

Outtakes:

Here’s an ooops. Yes, these things happen even when you know what you’re doing. We told the electrician to accomodate for 5 inch wide molding but something things like this happen. I’ll put this on the “to be fixed at a later date” list.

I had to go to San Antonio on business a few weeks ago. When you get off the plane you know you’re in Texas.

So coworkers took me to this great old town called Gruene (pronounced “Green”). This is a photo of the oldest dance hall in Texas.

And this is an old store that was part antiques and part chotchke.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, have a great one. And a very Happy New Year to all of you. It was another tough year but we made it through. Don’t forget to share with those that don’t have as much as you do.

The laundry room looks great. I have the same model Bosch washer that you seem to have and live in a house that is over a hundred years old. It shakes the entire house even on the reduced cycle. I have leveled it and tried the anti-vibration pads but nothing seems to help. Do you have an problems like this with your washer?

The laundry room looks great. Good use of space. One question, though, why didn’t you put in a sink? Even with a high-end washer that does everything, I find I use my large tub sink in the laundry room alot.

The Bosch washer does shake a bit but not the entire house. We actually didn’t do anything special to prevent the shaking. I have read that people put a big piece of plywood under it to make sure it’s really level but we just adjusted the feet and haven’t had any trouble. I mean the machine does shake and if I have a really full load you can hear it spinning anywhere in the house. I guess I try not to overload the machine and that seems to work.

We probably won’t do anything to the heating duct. The heating system is a high velocity, water based system that pumps heat and air conditioning through these very small ducts in the ceiling. I think the less attention drawn to it the better. The hole is no more than two inches around so we’ll just paint it whatever color the ceiling cover is and nobody will even notice it’s there.